Proper night riding

Tuesday night ride was cancelled so yesterday afternoon me and SI decided to nip upto Cragg Quarry after work, he's not been before. Drive upto his then set off, 40minutes in I realised it's a lot further to the top of rooley moor road from Si's than I remembered, getting pretty cold too. Eventually got to cragg and managed a loop in the dying light, good stuff, pedally but quite flowy, there was a lot of really good bits I'd forgotten about but I had other things on my mind last time. We had a second lap in the dark, much harder work, taking the downs a bit slower so even more pedally. Few near misses as I was coasting around the top of the berms instead of carving the start and cutting in. Ended up running out of berm a few times. Dunno how anyone would manage with just bar mounted lights, you can hit the berms so fast you need to look wayyyy ahead and scan the trail up down right and left, if you got the choice helmet mounted lights are the way to go. Was funny, stopping and looking back along the trail for Si and just seeing his light shining out above the hill he was climbing, very "close encounters" We split after that lap, he had a long downhill home I had a bit more testing route. Stupidly I did more of the loop again instead of going straight down RMR. When I did depart the loop RMR was no where to be seen I just had a rough idea of direction and a faint sheeptrack to follow, the track twisted and turned and then dissappeared. I looked ahead still no sign of RMR and no chance of tracing my route back - gulp! Started getting worried, didn't wanna get lost on the moors. I forged on and fortunatley found RMR close by, phew! Remembered the route back to sandbeds lane and over to holcombe moor OK, pretty good considering I've only done it once. It's a bugger of a climb onto the moor but I managed it and was presented with a nighttime vista different to the usual from rivi. I headed to crowthorne round the horseshoe, a bunch of bikers passed me at the maggot farm (particularly pungent!) My legs were fading fast so took the road home mostly downhill. A pretty hard route for a night ride, I was shattered at the end but it was a good blast.